“Our miners sign a one-year contract,” he said, “and they get paid at the end when the contract is fulfilled. We just had a new round of contracts signed in the autumn, but I can sign you on at a slightly reduced wage, and you can work out the rest of the year.” He went on to explain that through the year, while working out their contracts, the men could take out vouchers to be exchanged for food from the provisions tent. These vouchers would later be counted against their wages. I could see this for what it was—a way to reduce monetary wages by preying on the miners’ need to feed their families. But at the time, I didn’t care. It sounded as if our men would be able to get food for us right away.
“However,” Captain Garrett continued, “no one is allowed to trade vouchers for provisions until they’ve worked in the mines for at least a month. We’ve had a few workers load up on food, work one day, and then disappear.”
My father’s face fell. We needed food now. We could not last a month.
The captain seemed to understand this—although I’d been watching him count the number of men in our group, along with the boys old enough to work. I knew he wanted us to stay. He looked at our horses, which were all thin and weakened like us, but these last four were otherwise sound.
“I’ll buy your horses from you, and you can use the money to purchase provisions to feed your people.” He pointed north. “The miners’ camp is through those trees. You can get your wagons settled and then bring the horses to me.”
For traveling Móndyalítko, the idea of selling our horses was almost unthinkable. They were our lifeblood, our method of moving from one place to the next in the rhythm of the year. But we had lost our yearly rhythm, and the desperate state of the men drove them to agree with the captain’s offer. Later, I learned that none of the other miners had ever been told they had to work a month before taking advantage of the vouchers. Although Captain Garrett was a fair man in most ways, I thought he might have put us in a position of having to sell our horses so that we could not leave.
At the time, however, I didn’t know this.
By that afternoon, we’d settled our wagons in the miners’ camp. Our horses had been sold, and we’d been given a good price. Our larders were filled with supplies from the soldiers’ provision tent, including oats, lentils, dried tomatoes, onions, tea, wheels of cheese, and a few pails of milk with cream floating on the surface. How cheaply we’d been bought.
Then all the men except Marcus signed contracts to work for Captain Garrett. Marcus didn’t wish to sign, and he was excused because we would still need our hunter. I am ashamed at how relieved we all felt simply to have food and a place to camp and the promise of work, even if the men would not be paid in actual coin for nearly a year.
We lit a campfire, and Katlyn and I got to work making a large pot of lentil stew with onions and dried tomatoes. That night, Mariah sat by the fire with a blanket around her shoulders, and I brought her a warm bowl of lentils. She was too hungry to even wolf it down, so she took small bites.
“We can stay here?” she whispered. “We won’t have to leave tomorrow?”
I don’t think she understood that our horses were gone.
“No,” I whispered back, sitting beside her. “We don’t have to leave, and I’ll make you soft oats with cream for breakfast.”
She leaned into me and pressed her face in my shoulder. Maybe we were not bought so cheaply after all.
The next day, the men went to the mines to work, all except for Marcus and Great-Uncle Marten, who was too old. Only one of Shawn’s boys had not turned twelve yet, and apparently, any male over twelve was considered old enough to work in the silver mines. So in one fell swoop, Captain Garrett had gained my father, Uncle Landrien, Mikolai, Micah, Shawn, and four of Shawn’s sons.
I let Mariah rest that day, and I set about the task of getting a more permanent camp set up. Then I made supper. Katlyn helped me, and she also minded her two remaining children and Shawn’s youngest.
Aunt Miriam did not rise from her bunk, and I began to worry that she was more than simply weary. I brought her tea and food, but she couldn’t eat.
When the men came back that evening, I had my first inkling that we’d made a horrible mistake.
The Móndyalítko were not born to spend their days underground in the darkness. They need light and air. Though our men had been drawn to the promise of work, they’d not fully considered the type of work for which they were signing on—hard labor in the darkness underground.
I saw fear and desperation in the eyes of my father.
Mariah saw it, too, but her reaction offered no pity. Catching me alone, she asked, “We’re not leaving, are we? Father won’t give up and make us leave?”
“No,” I assured her. “We will not leave.”
I fed the men dinner and did what I could to make their evening pleasant with food and a warm campfire.
The following morning, they went back to the mines.
Two days later, Aunt Miriam died in her sleep. Uncle Landrien, Mikolai, and Marcus mourned her. So did Father and I. Poor Mariah was beyond mourning and barely seemed aware that her aunt was gone. The girl was too driven by fear of being back out on the road again.
As that first year passed, I made friends with the wives of the miners who lived in shacks and huts in our encampment, and a few of them taught me to use the food vouchers wisely. The soldiers placed a high price on luxuries like tea, so if I wished for our men to have more real money coming in at the end of their contracts, I learned to purchase only what was absolutely necessary. Of course, the problem with this was that I often ended up making the same things for supper—such as lentil stew. Marcus supplemented our meals with game and venison when he could. But the men were denied even small pleasures like tea. This troubled me, and yet, when I expressed my worries to my father, he told me to continue with my thrifty methods.
Over that year, I watched the life drain from the eyes of our men, and I saw a determination growing in my father that I’d never seen before. I knew he hated it here. He hated those mines. But what was going to happen when the men earned out their contracts and received the wages owed them? We certainly wouldn’t have enough to buy horses.
At the end of summer, I asked him, “What are we going to do?”
He studied me for a long moment. “I have a plan, but no one knows except Marcus, and you cannot speak of it yet. Do you swear?”
“Of course.”
“I’ve noticed the soldiers don’t guard their horses well, with perhaps one man on the perimeter at night. Once we are paid, after dark, we’ll overcome that one guard. We’ll take six horses and slip away the same night. We’ll leave Uncle Marten’s wagon behind. He can ride in Landrien’s. Micah and Katlyn and their children can ride with us.”
“No.” I shook my head. “Captain Garrett will come after us. You’ll be hanged for stealing their horses.”
“He won’t find us.” His voice lowered further. “I’ve let it be known that we all long to return to Belfleur Keep in the east. He will believe that we have run, and he’ll organize men to chase us east. But Marcus has found us a place to hide only three leagues away. There is freshwater, fish, and good hunting for him. We’ll hide out until the soldiers stop seeking us, and only then will we begin to move.”
This sounded risky, but if Marcus believed the hiding place to be sound, I trusted his judgment.
“Where will we go after that?” I asked.
“Back to Kéonsk. I’m going to speak to Master Deandre about finding us work in the city, even if we end up mucking out stalls for the Väränji soldiers.” His voice broke. “But we have to get away from here, my girl. This is no place for us. Those mines are no place for us.”